11 Tips For Strengthening The Chest Muscles

If you are building your chest muscles in order to join a bodybuilding competition, you are better off hiring a personal trainer and joining a gym with like-minded people. But, if you are thinking of building your chest muscles so that you can lift your own carry-on luggage when you get on the airplane without feeling like you’ve torn something, then you can benefit from this article.

If you are a single mom and you find that your parental duties also involve taking your kids camping and so, lugging tents, sleeping bags and packed food while hiking through the wilderness, carrying firewood and swinging a mallet to bury tent pegs, is part of your duties, well, then, read on.

Your reasons for developing your chest muscles can range from wanting to get rid of the painful tightness you feel around the upper chest near the shoulders to being able to move around and clean the garage without feeling a pulling in the chest area that makes you worry that you’re having a coronary are all understandable.

The reason why most people don’t succeed in building their chest muscles is that they don’t know how to do it. Your confusion is totally understandable, so let’s clear some of that up.

10 Tips For Strengthening The Chest

1. First, you need to make sure that you have set upon a goal for going into strength training. Make your goals specific such as: I want to tone my chest muscles so that I can actually see my feet when I’m in the shower.

2. Second, make sure that you get a clearance from your doctor. You will want to get a thorough check-up and discuss with your doctor your plans to go into strength training exercises. Ask your doctor for advice as to what would be appropriate exercises for you given your state of health.

3. Third, set aside a time for workouts at least three times every week (that’s every other day). Clear it of all other work and responsibilities so that you won’t have excuses to postpone, reset or forget about your workout.

4. Fourth, you can enrol in a gym or, you buy at least a set of free weights, dumbbells or kettlebells. If you don’t have the budget for it, save up your mineral water bottles and your milk jugs. Fill them up with water or with sand. They will work well for doing weight-training exercises at home.

5. Fifth, invest in tension bands and a workout video that you can follow. These will give you variety in your workout while also providing balance and stability exercises for you. These will help you stick to your workout long enough to see some results.

6. Sixth, gradually build strength and endurance. If at first you can only do half a push-up, then get lots of rest in between half-push-ups but make sure you are able to work in as many half-push-ups into your workout.

7. Seventh, you can actually use your own bodyweight to build your own chest muscles. Push-ups and pull-ups are good. If you have a jungle gym or monkey bars in the park nearby, you can actually bring your kids or the kids you babysit and work out on the jungle gym and monkey bars with them. Make sure educate yourself on the best bodyweight workouts and proper form of the individual exercises. While bodyweight training involves less risk of injury than using weight machines or free weights, there is still a chance of injury. And, without proper form you will be not get the absolute best desired results.

8. Eighth, the basic moves are: curl-ups, presses and pull-downs. You can look this up on the internet so that you can do them safely while maintaining the proper form. You can do these while sitting and lifting the weights from off the floor. You can do these standing up while holding the weights. You can also do these lying down.

9. Ninth, calisthenics exercises such as squats and lunges can be done while holding onto free weights, dumbbells or kettlebells to add resistance and tension to your workout. On their own, lunges and squats use your own body weight to build strength. But with dumbbells and free weights, you provide more resistance to work against and so, you will build muscle and strength better.

10. Tenth, as the objective is to bring more bulk, girth and tone to the chest muscles, you must consider eating more lean protein in your diet as the protein you eat will be the building blocks for muscle fibres.

11. Finally, make sure to get adequate rest and recover after each workout. Lifting weights is just the stimulus for building muscles – when you lift weights, you actually make microscopic tears in the muscles. And when you rest and recover, that’s when your body repairs those microscopic tears in the muscles by building more muscles in those tears. So, rest is a requirement, not an option.